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Force Pit Member

Hihi! I enjoyed that chapter quite a bit! I've been reading up on some theories, and it is pretty obvious that Oda explained to us that in G2 Luffy has speed but lacks power, and in G3 he has power but lacks speed. In order to beat Donflamingo he kinda has to have both. Thus people have been mentioning a gear that combines the two. Kind of an all body G3 but much more condensed and harder rubber (vulcanized due to heat). However, I don't know how this would fit because I wouldn't like Luffy to upgrade his Gears so that 2 and 3 are useless. But I can see him doing some type of rubber hardening which would make him even more of a brawler than what he is now since it would be a "defensive" technique to his gears now and still have mobility while hitting a bit harder.

Active Member

Can't say I'm too surprised, I think everyone expected another Gear power-up and the fight was pretty much going nowhere so I expected something like this to happen. This fight is going to get pretty good now though! Also I guess Trebol is out of the picture?

Force Pit Member

I have a question for you guys! The Narutoforums are pretty split when it comes to the latest chapter. It's two camps mostly. 1. Luffy is as strong (prior to the mention of G4) as Donflamingo and has taken the same amount of damage by Bellamy as Don in general, who got screwed over by Injection Shot and Gamma Knife. 2. Donflamingo is stronger, but has received a larger beating and got gimped by Oda through Law's techniques in order to level the playing field between Luffy and Don. What are your thoughts on this? In essence, if Luffy didn't receive any help from Law and went head to head with an undamaged Donflamingo, would he come out as the winner (with or without G4).

Swag

^
They only had a fist fight atm, which both of the final bosses exhausted. It did however seem like Doffy was getting an upper hand, putting the birdcage advantage aside. With G4 he'll prolly find a way to be advantageous.

The thing here is that wthout G4, what Luffy would do was stretch its muscles first (thus incresing their elastic force), then use CoA to harden the attack (which makes the attack hurt more). The CoA, while increasing the damage, did not increase the force of the attack. And it would be impossible to stretch it after using CoA because the haki made his muscles a lot more stiff and they didn't have enough elasticity to handle any further stretching.

G4 is basically a way to break that barrier and allow Luffy to stretch after using CoA, not before. With his muscles filled with air, their density is reduced, so they become more elastic. Although CoA increases the stiffness of the material, that is balanced by the lower density of the muscle itself, which creates room for stretching that wouldn't be possible before, by allowing more room for the muscle tissue to compress. And as it turns out, stretching a muscle that is harder due to CoA allows for a much higher potential energy, which in turn increases the actual elastic force of the attack by a higher ratio than it would if Luffy were just hardening a muscle that has already been stretched. Not only that, but it allows his body to be "rubbery", like Dofla said, taking hits by stretching like it usually would pre-timeskip.

Of course, if Luffy is going for a higher stifness, then he will be required to employ a higher force in order to stretch his muscles in the first place. Luffy is using an amount of force he has never used before to make that possible. Expect G4's downside to be because of that.

Tl;DR: Gear 4 is a way of using CoA's to maximise power by hardening without sacrificing elasticity, but it requires the user to employ a bigger force.

Swag

It's a teeny bit confusing though, why hasn't he done it before? He did explain that he had to use that in the 2 years he fought those monsters, and he couldn't control haki before that. However, he still chose up until now to always stretch/inflate himself and then use haki instead of using his free choice that he does against Dof? Does it cost a lot of energy or?

Force Pit Member

Swag

looks like a new powersystem was just explained, didn't whitebeard make quakes in the air coz of the impact of his power? surely if there is an "awakening" a person of his level would have it and how he used his power in the war arc would can be explained with this, unless it really just was pure impact. wouldn't be a surprise for oda to think this far he's done it a lot.

Force Pit Member

Also, some speculation has been made that Aokiji and Akainu were awakened during their fight on Punk Hazard. That is why their powers totally affected the environment and still is. But I never believed that there was an awakening for Paramecia and Logia like the Zoans, could be quite hax in the end. But I guess all powers have different effects when they are awakened.